Dynamic Aspects of the Strategic Planning of Information Systems

Marko Hell, Stjepan Vidačić, Josip Brumec

Abstract

The SPIS methodology provides methods and techniques of developing an information system (IS) that would correspond with the requirements of an organization. The result of its application is the strategic plan of IS development that would meet the future needs. As is the case in the methodology of the strategic planning in general, the primary drawback to the strategic planning of the information system is the lack of efficient control of implementation of the strategic plan, and this is precisely what this research paper deals with. One of the procedures in the measuring of results of an organization, which is also recommended by the SPIS, is the Balanced Scorecard methodology (BSC). However, the BSC concept which the classic SPIS methodology recommends as suitable for the evaluation of performance of the information technology (IT) on the business system and the performance of that new business system, does not take into account the constraint that may lead to non-implementation of the planned activities. Furthermore, the BSC has been criticised for the oversimplified modelling of the cause-consequence relations that do not take into account the time delay and the feedback.This paper provides results of the research that resulted in identification of two types of constraints that need to be included when determining the optimal IS/IT strategy. Within the context of the system dynamics (SD) approach, the broadening of the problem with the analysis of the strategy implementation dynamics results in the new practical knowledge about the control over the time-dependant values and, consequently, with a proposal that would eliminate the reasons for the abovementioned criticism.